Wu Man, Virtuoso of the Pipa,
An Arts Enhancement Event

• Sunday, January 24, 2010
• Old Cabell Hall
• 8:00pm
• $10/ $5 Student/ Free for UVA students who reserve in advance

Charlottesville – Internationally acclaimed pipa (Chinese lute) virtuoso Wu Man will be in residency at UVA’s McIntire Department of Music January 23-25 2010. The high point of the residency will be a solo concert in Old Cabell Hall Auditorium on Sunday, January 24, 2010 at 8:00 pm. The residency is taking place in conjunction with the traveling art exhibition, Treasures Rediscovered: Chinese Stone Sculpture from the Sackler Collections at Columbia University, which will be on view at the UVA Art Museum from January 15 - March 14, 2010.

Wu Man was the first student to receive a master’s degree in pipa from the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing. Since that time, she has gone on to be the most prominent performer on the instrument, known both for her performances of the classical Pudong School of pipa playing from Imperial China, as well as being an outstanding exponent of contemporary compositions for pipa by leading Chinese composers such as Tan Dun as well as Western composers including Terry Riley, Philip Glass, and Lou Harrison. Her three most recent recordings have all been nominated for Grammy Awards. Wu Man is also a prominent member of Yo Yo Ma’s Silk Road Ensemble.

For more information: http://www.wumanpipa.org/.
For video: Thursday on the NewsHour: Wu Man

"...Wu, who is one of the most elegant musicians before the public today, has shown a special flair for crossing over, inspiring some of Philip Glass' and Lou Harrison's best music. Yo-Yo Ma's Silk Road project would be of an inferior silk without her." Los Angeles Times

"Wu Man played...with staggering mastery, drawing from her instrument a veritable symphony of sounds, hollow, percussive thwacks, glittery pinpricks of tone, slithery, kaleidoscopic washes of light, and the sigh of skin against string." Newsday

"...Ms. Wu's most striking variations were densely chromatic, and I could have sworn I heard some Hendrix in her upper-range playing toward the end..." New York Times

"Wu Man is one of the rare musicions who has changed the history of the instrument she plays." Boston Globe

This is an Arts Enhancement Event supported by the Provost’s Office to increase the awareness of and support for the arts at the University of Virginia.

Listen to Wu Man's album From a Distance through Naxos music library.

Listen to an interview by Wu Man on PBS.